


Fadeaway

by Occula



Category: U2
Genre: Angst, Healing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 12:06:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12630720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Occula/pseuds/Occula
Summary: Following Adam through some difficult years after he meets Bono and falls for him.





	Fadeaway

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ Sept. 15, 2005. Written for a challenge: in fewer than 1500 words, the story should include a breakup and use the words lust, infatuation, trousers, pandemonium, and fade.

1\. Lust 

For young Adam to feel a passing interest in the boys and girls around him wasn’t unusual. Or more than a passing interest, in some cases. Even at his age, though, he had a keen sense of what was possible, what was impossible, and the size of the chasm between. So the sharp-faced, sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued, sharp-witted lad next to him in Literature, the handsome, unruly boy with a mop of hair and piercing blue stare who seemed to have read everything already, became just a friend, a mate. Still, the first feelings that lad aroused – yes, that’s the word, “aroused” – the first feelings Paul aroused in Adam were most certainly lustful. Paul was so compelling, the flames of his personality and ambition and beauty burned so brightly, all these things merged into one conflagration. And Adam ignited.

2\. Infatuation

Time passed, but desire remained. Things, as they are prone to do, changed, and Paul became Bono, although Adam remained Adam, only more so. Adam’s formal education came to a not unexpected end, and there was a band, and then there was a gang of four, and somehow Adam and Bono were the elders of that small, strange tribe. And things happened in Adam’s heart, his warm, true, boyish, manly heart. It should be noted that his was a complex heart, one full of rooms and nooks and twists: generous, bold, and kind; foolish and headstrong; romantic, timid, and faithful. This heart, and the pure, clean need it had fostered, began to turn. Began to center and focus. Began to cherish, dote, and infatuate. On Bono.

3\. Trousers

Time passes so slowly yet so quickly. Life, Adam thought, is a lot like the process of getting drunk. You’re catching a buzz, and then you’re drunk, and finally you’re wasted and helpless and sick, and things slip through your hands and go out of your control. Adam didn’t trouble himself with why they called it “wasted” and what the implications might be for what he was doing to his own life. He was too sick for further philosophy. He should’ve known, earlier, when he saw how far Bono’s shirt was unbuttoned, how tightly Bono’s black trousers clenched his body, that he’d make himself ill this night.

Most of the manifestation of his sickness had occurred in the pub’s loo and in the alley outside. Then Bono had calmed him and given him water; he’d helped Adam wash his face, and by the time he was giving him a sweet, icy cola, Adam felt almost human. He was a drunk, sick human, but still, all things considered, it was a vast improvement.

Bono staggered Adam to their room and put him in the chair rather than on Adam’s designated bed. Adam watched Bono kneel before him to help with his shoes, and his mind took him to places he usually went only in private or, increasingly, only when drunk or high. Adam stared at the strong hand on his thigh, the hand moving his leg, the shoulders, the hair, the head, the face, the man on his knees. He let out a long, shuddering breath and accidentally vocalized, so that his sigh was accompanied by a moan. Bono, hauling him to his feet, shot a concerned look, his hand on Adam’s hip burning through his trousers. “Do you need more help?” Bono asked, hesitating. Adam looked down at his jeans and Bono’s hands not touching him, at his own hard bulge and the glint off Bono’s wedding band. He shook Bono off and threw himself face down on his bed without a word. Alone

4\. Pandemonium

He’d done what seemed right, for once, when his back was against the wall and there was no choice whatsoever. Face them or kill himself, crawl or die, those were the choices, and he crawled, a dignified, painful, apologetic, and somehow desperately proud crawl. When it was over and they’d accepted him as much as possible, when the seeds were planted that he hoped would allow them to forgive him one day, when it was done he crawled off again, back to his own palatial room. There, alone, he sat limply in a chair, his stomach wavering, his hands trembling, and contemplated how very far it was possible to fall. How far, how fast, how hard.

At the knock, he didn’t bother to look through the peephole. He opened the door and registered Bono’s presence, and impassively he stood aside. Bono went in, not glancing about the wreck of a room even as he kicked aside an empty wine bottle, and he looked at Adam as though Adam hurt his eyes.

“D’you mean it?” Bono asked, and Adam bristled.

“Fuck off, I’ve done enough for one morning,” he began wearily, but then he saw that the hurt wasn’t from him, even though it was of him and for him. Adam saw it in Bono’s eyes as Bono took his face between his palms, painfully hard. 

“Do you mean it!” Bono practically shouted at him. “Adam, do you mean it this time?”

He hadn’t the strength to be resentful. He simply nodded. “Yes,” he said, and his voice was lifeless and exhausted. “It has to stop, _I_ have to stop.”

Bono threw his arms around him and held him tightly, body to body. “Thank God,” Bono said, and in his voice Adam finally heard the real horror Bono had carried with him for so long. He knew exactly what Bono was in horror _of_ , and his humiliation ramped up another notch at having caused this pain and fear.

“I’m sorry,” he tried, trembling in Bono’s arms, and Bono turned his head ever so slightly and kissed him in the general vicinity of his jaw.

It was too much, the smell, the sound, the warmth, the breathing. Too much, and Adam turned his head more than slightly and kissed Bono, kissed his cheek and hurried to his mouth. Bono hesitated, but it wasn’t as though he hadn’t known; he was neither blind nor naïve nor a fool, and he gave Adam the kiss he needed.

But Adam needed more, he needed heat and pandemonium and rampant disorder. Already, on day one, he needed a substitute for the bottle, needed more reassurance than a man can get with clothes on, and Bono was, after all, a healer.

5\. Fade

It wasn’t what Adam had always imagined, because Adam hadn’t imagined that he’d be heartsick and defeated when it happened. It wasn’t a joyful coming together as much as it was a breakdown and a salvaging. Adam’s need, his need for love, for support, for a center, had never been so acute, and Bono did love Adam quite sincerely and desperately, although perhaps not in the way that Adam had always hoped. Love was love, need was need, and Bono spent every night with Adam for the rest of the tour while he fought with his ghosts. There was pain and comfort, there was hunger and fulfillment, and there was, at times, at moments, a certain cautious joy, an uplifting. It wasn’t bad, despite everything.

But nothing lasts; nothing stays, as one city leads to another and eventually to the last. There were some bad nights, there were tentative meetings and precarious phone calls, but Adam had to learn to sleep alone. Eventually he made it. It was a time of relationships ending and beginning, changes for Adam and for Edge as well. It was the end of one creative phase and time for the dormant phase before the next. It was time for Bono to learn to sleep at home again, and it was time for Larry to spread his wings a little. Adam, as we know, went along with him.

Was there a breakup? Was there something _to_ break up? Certainly there was no breaking apart, no shattering any further than each of them had been shattered individually. Madness and reckless speed faded to routine and ritual; too-vivid colors blended to everyday grey. Despair and satiation slid into numbness. Perhaps there was a hibernation of sorts, a dormant period when each of them curled their tattered selves about them, took stock, and made repairs. All this was necessary before healing and rebirth; those happened too, in their due time.

It hadn’t been a fling. It hadn’t been undertaken lightly, and it didn’t fade away easily. But stitches dissolve when wounds heal, and as good as it had been, as necessary, as life-saving and life-giving, it had served its purpose, and it did, at last, fade away.


End file.
